


How Orlando met Furioso

by Kiiratam



Series: Blake's Fanfiction [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), RWBY
Genre: F/F, Fanfiction, M/M, Mind Control, Prison, character backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28085595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiiratam/pseuds/Kiiratam
Summary: Just the backstory for my first Fortresses & Froghemoths character. It's set in Ulmenland, under the rule of Iron Theocracy and the Antiprimate.By BlackCat13.Thanks to StrawberrySlugger for help making Orlando, and for letting me use Furioso. (And I'm working on the smut! Stop sending me ::crying eyes:: and ::eggplants:: already!)(Takes place between Volumes 1 & 2. (My BMBLB fic index))
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long
Series: Blake's Fanfiction [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1526540
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	How Orlando met Furioso

"Hey, you. You're finally awake."

  
Orlando Innamorato, elite guard of the Antiprimate, did not much care for this consciousness he was experiencing. His eyes were open, but all he could see were the pounding veins of his aching skull. And what he assumed was a blindfold, tightly tied around his head.

  
Whoever it was kept talking, low and quiet. "You were trying to leave the city, right? Just slip over the walls during the night?"

  
Orlando nodded, and immediately regretted it. He tried to cradle his head, and found his hands were manacled, and his fingers tightly wrapped in cloth. The surface he was sitting on jumped and juddered, and he could hear the creak of wood and metal. And smell things he'd rather not. A prison cart, then.

  
"I don't know how, but the guards were waiting for us. And you, and the smuggler."

  
Another voice, reedy and less quiet, "Damn you rebels. All of Ulm was fat and happy, and no one bothered me at all, and then you fools start a rebellion."

  
"Fat and happy?! If you cared about more than money-"

  
A pounding on the roof, and a gruff voice. "Shut up in there. Save your breath for screaming; we're almost there."

  
The reedy voice, a harsh whisper. "Why are you even talking to him, rebel? He's a mage."

  
A mage. He was a mage. Orlando desperately wanted to blame someone else for that. But it was all his fault.

  
"So maybe he can get us out."

  
A snort. "Why do you think they have him blind and bound? Don't you know anything about magic? Can't magic what you can't see. And they need to wiggle their fingers, make arcane gestures."

  
Orlando hadn't wanted this. But he hadn't been able to ignore it any longer. For years, he'd denied the truth, wrapped himself in steel and silk, intrigue and combat. But the noises, the damned noises, repeating in his head, begging to let out, to be free, to ring out - 

  
"Besides, don't you recognize him? This isn't some back-alley rapscallion with flame-weaving." The reedy voice went on, and Orlando wanted to yell at him to stop his gloating -

  
\- But Orlando was only a mage. He deserved this, and worse.

  
"This is Innamorato, one of the antiprimate's bastards. One of the vipers of the cathedral, one of the cross-talking, backstabbing elite guards that convulse the city with their schemes, and create all those injustices you rebels love to go on about."

  
The rebel didn't say anything. But Orlando could feel the air in the prison cart shift - desperate hope replaced by seething hatred. And he was blind. Shackled. Unarmed.

  
He tensed for the first blow, wondering if he still had the will to fight. What was the point? His life was already over. This was just a final sentence, as abrupt and unwanted as his first. 

  
A creak of wood, as someone shifted their weight. And Orlando's reflexes took over, making him lean out of the way as someone swung for his face. A clatter of manacles against the wooden wall, the chain barely moving, rusting solid.

  
The attacker let out an incredulous noise, which helped Orlando pinpoint them. He couldn't grab with his hands bound like this, but he could still push. Ignoring the growing pain in his skull, he rolled around to the back of his attacker, found their head - slammed it into the wall, the lip of the bench.

  
They were screaming now - in that ear-tearing way when one was helpless and in pain. And even if there was no one to help, you still screamed.

  
Orlando wanted to close his ears to it - it would be so much easier. He could hear the guards outside swear and scramble for the key and the door, the smuggler's quiet noise of appreciation - And the rebel's screams.

  
And the easiest way to make it stop, the way he'd always made it stop before, was just to keep going, to keep hurting, slamming heads into edges of walls, going for the throat, the lungs - Then it was only the scrabbling of fingers in the throes of death, the drumming of heels - easier to ignore. To talk over.

  
But now, for the first time, the scream spoke to Orlando. Echoed within him, made him want to respond in kind - the same helplessness, the same pain, only a few steps behind.

  
The prison cart door was wrenched open with a screech of poorly oiled hinges, and the space was filled with noises as the guards charged in.

  
Orlando sat, awaiting another blow, unsure what he was going to do, if he would even resist the guards. The rebel was scum, barely worth the violence. The guards were just doing their job. And he was just a mage. Mages were always worth the violence, because if you didn't get them first, they'd destroy you.

  
Even if Orlando didn't want this curse, these powers, these damned noises erupting out of his skull and dealing out ruination and death -

  
He heard a truncheon being swung, and tried to hold still. He deserved this.

_"Hey Yang?"_

  
_"Yeah Blake?_

  
_"What do you imagine your character sounds like?"_

  
_"Um. I hadn't really thought about it. I kind of know what he looks like...?"_

  
_"Oh, um, I'll get there, but Orlando's blindfolded right now -"_

  
_"Kinky."_

  
_"It's because they don't know he's a lyric thaumaturge, and just needs to hear his targets."_

  
_"Makes sense that they wouldn't get the differences between mages. Hating something isn't a good basis for understanding it."_

  
_"Right."_

  
_"And, um, I dunno on the voice? Pick something your character would find attractive, I guess?"_

"Halt!" The word rang through the cart, and Orlando experienced a blessed moment of silence in its wake. Even the rebel shut up.

  
The moment passed,and the noises began again, the rebel mewling in pain, the creak of leather, the guards seemingly shuffling their feet -

  
One began, "Inquisitor-"

  
But the commanding voice was having none of it. "Disgraceful. Failing to deliver prisoners in good condition, failing to properly bind prisoners-"

  
"But Inquisitor, the cart-"

  
"The cart is not responsible for your failures. You were the ones who became complacent." A fine voice, lacking the cultivated affectations of the nobility, brimming with confidence.

  
In other circumstances, Orlando would have contrived a conversation with the inquisitor, a chance to listen to how he wove words, to gauge the mind behind the voice. Not simply for Orlando's own pleasure (though he had hardly discounted that), but to reckon the threat to the Antiprimate. Was this inquisitor a true believer, a dedicated witch-hunter and bane of heretics - or were they seeking power?

  
But Orlando was no longer one of the Antiprimate's Own. He was a mage, just another one of the threats that Orlando had laid plans against.

  
And the inquisitors, this inquisitor, was a tool to be used against mages. No, not a tool. A weapon.

  
"I'm taking charge of the mage. Bring him to me."

  
Orlando was pulled to his feet, his head throbbing, not sure how he was going to step down off the cart blindfolded. ...He would probably just be thrown off. Taking a deep breath, he braced himself for the coming pain. 

  
A set of strong hands grasped his hips, and lifted him off the cart bed, as if he was a child, and not a man full-grown. How strong was this inquisitor? And why did he care for the well-being of a lowly mage?

  
"Clean this mess up." There was a parade ground snap in the inquisitor's tone.

  
And the guards fell over their replies, "Yes-" "Right-" "-Inquisitor." "-away Sir." "...Sir."

  
The inquisitor took Orlando by the arm, and started forward. With no choice but to blindly follow - or be dragged, given the inquisitor's strength - Orlando tried to match his captor's speed. The inquisitor's pace was longer, and Orlando took a few quick steps as he tried to adjust -

  
\- But the inquisitor shortened his stride, and the two of them fell into a synchronous pace easily. The soles of their boots sounded on the pavement together.

  
Pavement. They must be close to the prison, with the paved square of execution and torture outside of it. The bloodstains were renewed often enough that the pavement was stained red. Even the rains couldn't wash it away, now. Orlando wondered if his blood would join with all the other traitors, heretics, and mages slain here. Not now - there wasn't a crowd gathered - some passers-by, but nothing like the soul-shaking roar of a crowd hungry for blood.

  
"Innamorato, that was excellent work with the mage-assassin last month."

  
Orlando couldn't keep his face - usually so well trained - from registering his surprise. "Inquisitor?"

  
"In the basilica? You kept the Antiprimate safe from the venomous bolts of that killer. How did you know he was there? He was wrapped in an invisibility charm."

  
"I heard him."

  
"Heard him? While he was in the balcony and you were on the ground?" A great deal of skepticism, but also genuine curiosity.

  
"I-" Orlando didn't know how to explain, knew that it was related to his magic, that he was confessing to an inquisitor - but he was already bound and blind. They could only torture him to death once. "You know how sound can carry oddly in the basilica?"

  
"...I have noticed that, yes."

  
"I first discovered it when I learned I could overhear what was being said in her Grace's box from - well, nevermind where."

  
The inquisitor let out a snort. "So that's how her secret got out."

  
Orlando decided that he didn't need to reveal all of his intrigues. Some secrets could be taken to the grave, purely for the satisfaction. He pressed on. "From there, I made a study of the entire basilica, investigating how sounds seem to travel through the space, deflecting off of walls."

  
"...Like a blade off of plate armor."

  
"Precisely."

  
"Fascinating. And you were in a position where you could hear that balcony?"

  
He could only die once. And this inquisitor was still treating him like an actual person, even though he knew that Orlando was a mage. "Not... precisely. Once I understood how sounds traveled within the basilica, I didn't need to stand in any particular spot. I could hear everything within the basilica, all the time. I just had to concentrate."

  
They walked in silence for a bit, the inquisitor grasping Orlando's arm tightly.

  
At last, the inquisitor spoke. "Magic or no, Innamorato, it was well done."

  
Orlando wasn't sure how to take that. Congratulations for his last worthwhile act as one of the Antiprimate's Own? A grudging acknowledgement of his good deeds, before the end? He pondered that as the inquisitor led him into the prison, leading him through gates and up stairs, all to the tramp of patrolling guards, and the distant moans of prisoners. 

  
The inquisitor guided Orlando to sit on a hard bed. "The jailer will be here shortly, to fit you with an iron hood." His hand vanished from Orlando's arm, and Orlando suddenly felt the crushing weight of his situation again. He choked back a 'don't go,' a foolish and weak sentiment, especially directed to an inquisitor by a mage. He deserved this isolation, all the pain that would doubtlessly begin soon -

  
And he felt the inquisitor's hand on his shoulder, squeezing tightly. "You are my charge, Innamorato. I will return. If nothing else, you are better conversation than the typical fire-breathing mad mages I combat."

  
Orlando swallowed, and perversely, felt his courtly manners come to the fore. "How should I call you, inquisitor?"

  
"FitzBattleaxe. Or Furioso, if you care."

  
And, grasping at the last thread of civility left to him, Orlando did care.

_"I don't know if I really want to do the whole prison story. All the de-personing they put prisoners through? It wouldn't be a lot of fun for me to write about."_

  
_"You've already written, what, two, three pages? It doesn't have to be a book, Blake. And it's not like it's homework you have to finish before we can play. Grapes, sometimes I don't even give my characters a name until level three."_

  
_"I know, I just think it'll help me get into character."_

  
_"Hey, as long as you're having fun. ...So when does the smut start?"_

  
_"Yang!"_

  
_"C'mon, you know you want to write some!"_

  
_"...After I get the romance set up."_

  
_"What are you waiting for, then? Get to the wooing already!"_

It had been ten weeks. Ten weeks for Orlando to rot in his cell. Ten weeks of screams, and boredom, and the unaccountable waste of all the schemes that Orlando had devised, and plotted, and was in no position to execute.

  
At least he hadn't been tortured. Oh, his jailers had taken great joy in fitting a heavy collar on him,and bolting an iron hood onto that, such that light had become a distant memory. He could catch a flicker of shadowy illumination every so often, creeping in through the thin slits of air vents on the back of the hood. And it had taken a week to find a position that he could actually sleep in, to say nothing of his bumbling explorations of his cell. And the hunger - always creeping in, never overpowering him - Orlando suspected his magery was keeping him sustained. Starvation would not be an escape.

  
He was just going to stay here, blind and alone, until he went completely mad. And after that, at least, Orlando fancied that he wouldn't mind staying.

  
The one bright spot - purely metaphorically, of course - was his infrequent visitor. The same inquisitor who had brought him into the prison. FitzBattleaxe. Who Orlando couldn't bring himself to blame. It would be so easy, but he wasn't the author of Orlando's pains.

  
Orlando only had himself to blame. Manifesting magic, trying to flee the city - he had condemned himself.

  
But wasn't his fault that the magic, the sounds, the music, had bloomed out of him. Orlando hadn't asked for it, had tried to fight it. But he could only fight against his own true self for so long. And in the end, he'd been weak.

_"Ugh."_

  
_"Yeah, this homework for Port is a killer. "_

  
_"Oh. No, not that. I got my character stuck."_

  
_"I mean: prison. That is kind of the point."_

  
_"Not that. He's just so convinced that he deserves to be in prison because he's a mage, and I'm not sure how to snap him out of it."_

  
_"Ohhh. Yeah, that's rough. Ummm... Well, if you want to be super sappy, have his pure love for Furioso break through his despair."_

  
_"...I don't think 'pure love' and 'charm magic' go together."_

  
_"I mean, no, but Orlando's still new at magic, and there's a lot of stuff about uncontrolled spells being cast by inexperienced mages. Maybe he just really wants Furioso's ... axe, and the charm goes off without Orlando really intending it. You could milk that for a lot of angst!"_

  
_"...Are you really okay with my character doing that to yours?"_

  
_"Considering that Furioso hunts, imprisons, and kills mages professionally? Yeah, pretty much. It's a mutually screwed-up relationship."_

Orlando raised his head as he heard footsteps and the quiet clinking of armor. No one other than FitzBattleaxe had visited him, but...

  
...The risks of being wrong were too great. If it was another inquisitor, mentioning FitzBattleaxe would suggest conspiracy. Especially with the hope that Orlando knew would color his voice, hope for a decent conversation, for a connection to the outside, for-

  
"You were right about that alcove. From it, you can hear everything that happens in the confessional. What if I told you that the Viscount is _very_ familiar with his confessor?"

  
Orlando smiled, nearly laughed. "Directly to business, my dear Inquisitor? Whatever happened to the exchange of pleasantries?"

  
"Oh, stuff the pleasantries. You haven't been anywhere new, and I just told you the only new thing I've learned."

  
"Only the one? I am very nearly disappointed."

  
"Very nearly." FitzBattleaxe paused. "...There was one other thing. Your position has been filled."

  
Replaced. The position Orlando had fought and intrigued for, gone to- "By whom?"

  
"Holger Three-Hearts."

  
A brute of a man, so named for having been taken through the heart thrice. And, obviously, living through that encounter. He had all the subtlety of a wounded bear - though perhaps a base, slimy cunning -

  
"Looks horrible in the uniform. You looked much better in it. Still would."

  
Orlando's mind raced. FitzBattleaxe was hardly the type to freely distribute compliments. What was his scheme? Was it related to his imprisonment? Weren't most mages executed, not captured? Was all of this just an elaborate attempt at recruiting him? ... For what, though? His mouth responded, without any input from him. "You are very kind to say so."

  
"Bah, think nothing of it. It is criminal to throw away a bodyguard as skilled as you, mage or not-" FitzBattleaxe paused. "-Though I suppose your magic made you a better bodyguard, didn't it?"

  
It had. His magic, his gift of sounds, of causing them, of hearing them, in all those damned patterns - it had saved the antiprimate's life. It was useful, regardless of what else it was. And his magic was trying to help him - even here, it was trying to keep him company, for all that he rejected it.

  
A sudden lust for life bloomed in Orlando's head, pushed him into action. "Inquisitor - FitzBattleaxe. Can you tell me why I haven't been executed?"

  
He let out a grunt, and Orlando, even though he had never seen the inquisitor, could hear the shrug in that noise. "The antiprimate is reluctant to spill the blood of his own family?"

  
"No, that isn't it." Orlando stood up, pacing around the limits of his cell. "He's always got a plan. Have other mages been detained here?"

  
"Some. There's a pyromancer, an artificer, a soothsayer-"

  
"Do any of them receive visitors?"

  
"...Come to think of it, the soothsayer does receive some."

  
Orlando felt a surge of certainty. "Two men in heavy cloaks, the taller one with a large shield, the front of it covered? And the smaller one didn't speak?"

  
A creak of armor, as FitzBattleaxe took a step back in astonishment. "How-? Is this another of your spells?"

  
"Nay, that is not my magic. I do not see the future, or the past. But the soothsayer does, and the antiprimate clearly wishes to make use of their magic." Orlando knew he had to keep pressing, keep the inquisitor off-balance. "And the artificer - I'm sure they're allowed tools of some kind."

  
"She was a jeweler of some repute, and the antiprimate was fond of her work-"

  
"Rings of protection, amulets of power - of course he was fond of it. I thought he was merely the luckiest man alive, to survive so many assassination attempts. But he's using magic. Not directly, no, not obviously. But according himself an advantage and denying it to all others." Filled with more than a lust for life, Orlando turned and stuck his arm out through the bars, towards FitzBattleaxe. "Help me, please. Help me show his hypocrisy to the world." His fervor pulsed within him, so loudly that surely FitzBattleaxe could hear it.

  
A strong hand grasped Orlando's, squeezing tightly. Tightly enough that he could feel the steady thrum of Furioso's heart. And Orlando could feel it pound furiously, as his captor became his conspirator. And their hearts beat as one.

_"I really need to do the homework for Port."_

  
_"Wait, you haven't done that yet? Blake, it's due tomorrow."_

  
_"I know, I just- got wrapped up in this, and I still have to write the actual jail-break, and I don't know what the jail looks like-"_

  
_"Hey, Ruby's going to give us more action than we can stand. Don't worry about all the details. Just have them, I dunno, ready for adventure."_

"Innamorato - Orlando." The inquisitor's voice was rough with emotion. "I release your hand, but only so I can free you from this cell. Stand back."

  
He obeyed, and there was a great sound of sundered metal, and Furioso's hand took his again. 

  
"I will free you from your iron hood shortly, but we must escape first. And, to my regret, I will need both hands to wield my axe."

  
Orlando squeezed his comrade's hand. "I will follow the sounds of your victories."

  
"And swift victories they must be, my sweet-tongued mage, before the whole prison falls upon us! Come."

  
As they set off, Orlando found a rhythm in his head, and set it free as a jaunty whistle. He would not die here, ashamed of himself. Maybe he would fall here, next to Furioso. But if he did, he would die proud.

  
He heard surprised shouts coming from before him, and Furioso's war-cry. Orlando raised his song to join the growing clamor. 


End file.
